


you say you're okay (I'm gonna heal you anyway)

by DivineProjectZero



Series: the cure [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Codependency, Deaf Christine Canigula, Deaf Michael Mell, F/F, M/M, Magical Realism, Pining, Siren Jeremy Heere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 17:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11651589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: The thing is, they're both broken.





	you say you're okay (I'm gonna heal you anyway)

**Author's Note:**

> Self-betaed. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
> 
> Title from Lady Gaga's "The Cure."
> 
> I'm pretending Michael is like, _incredibly_ good at lipreading. It's fiction. Don't think too hard about it.

There are days when Michael misses music. When he misses the sound of morning birdsong, the sound of his parents' laughter, the sound of people calling his name. The shriek of a boiling kettle. The soothing hum of the rain. The chime of the doorbell. He misses having audible warnings before someone touches him out of nowhere, or being able to have conversations with people that don’t require his hands to be free all the time. He misses being a normal, average kid.

Especially at times like these:

“Dude, you sure about this?” Rich pouts, disappointment clear in his posture even if Michael can’t hear his tone. “Even if you're not watching the show, there's still a ton of stuff we can do in the city before the showing."

Michael shrugs and signs at Christine, who’s standing between them.

“I don't like Manhattan. Too crazy.” Christine translates aloud, nodding in understanding. “Yeah, it gets a bit hectic even with my ears,” she says, tapping her electric pink hearing aids. She directs her attention to Jeremy, who’s standing opposite of her in their little huddle. “You sure you don’t want to come?”

Jeremy shakes his head. **You guys go have fun** _,_ he signs.

Christine frowns but nods. “Okay. We’ll go tell the others that you guys aren’t coming with us to the city, then.”

“We’ll tell you guys all about it later,” Rich promises as he follows Christine to the school parking lot, leaving Michael and Jeremy in front of the lockers.

Michael turns so he’s facing Jeremy properly. **You could have just gone with them. I don’t mind. You love musicals.**

**Not without you** , Jeremy signs. He notices Michael’s unimpressed look and adds, **I’m tired anyway. And the songs from that show aren’t really my type**. He makes a face. **Too much hip-hop**.

Michael rolls his eyes at him. **Whatever. Your loss**.

**I’d rather play video games with you** , Jeremy signs back with a smile that makes Michael’s treacherous heart skip a beat. Dammit, he really needs to develop some immunity to Jeremy making mushy statements. 

He makes a show of punching Jeremy’s shoulder and turning back to his locker so he can find his math notebook, lost somewhere in the messy pile of his stuff, but in his peripheral vision, he can tell that Jeremy’s gaze has gone wistful, lingering in the direction Christine and Rich just left. Part of Michael wants to turn around and yell at him to go. A bigger part of him, the part that always craves Jeremy’s presence, wants to press Jeremy up against the lockers and kiss him, to give him something worth staying with Michael for.

Who the fuck is he kidding. Jeremy doesn’t need Michael’s feelings to chain him down. Not when Michael is already dragging him back.

He misses being a normal, average kid who could go watch musicals with his friends and have conversations without needing an ASL interpreter. He misses the days when he could be confident that Jeremy was his friend because he wanted to be.

Most of all, he misses the sound of Jeremy’s voice.

-

See, the thing is, they’re both broken. Nobody can fix either of them.

Because Jeremy had been twelve years old, puberty shaking his mother’s bloodline alive, voice cracking at the edges with power he didn’t know how to quite control, and Michael had been twelve and impatient, human down to his bones, thoughtless as he turned the doorknob and found the Heere household’s front door unlocked. 

Because he’d heard the sound of Jeremy’s parents arguing, yelling, and he’d frozen in the hallway as he heard Jeremy’s voice, telling his parents please, _don’t fight, why are you fighting, please stop, why won’t you listen to me, STOP—_

Because Michael had passed out right there as Jeremy’s voice rung out, shattering all the thick soundproofed windows in the house, hit by the sound of Jeremy’s scream clawing its way into his head, and Mrs. Heere, who’d clapped her hands over her husband’s ears just in time, didn’t know he was there until she found him unconscious in the doorway.

Because Michael woke up to a silent world and nobody could change it for him, not Mrs. Heere’s voice, not any of the best doctors in New Jersey, not even the strongest of the local witches.

Because his ears were actually fine; it was his brain that was irrevocably configured, unable to receive signals from his eardrums, his world gone soundless and quiet, wired shut with siren song, too strong and too old in its power to be banished by time or technology or magic.

Because Jeremy ripped all sound from Michael’s world with a single word.

Michael came to terms with his newfound deafness, busted into Jeremy’s room past the _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ written everywhere, and said _it wasn’t your fault, I forgive you, it’s okay_.

Jeremy cried for days, dug himself so deep into guilt that Michael couldn’t dig him out, and hasn’t said a single word out loud ever since.

-

(Barely six months after Jeremy ruins his best friend's life, after Jeremy's voice vanishes in the wake of his guilt, he comes back home and his mom's gone. All that's left of her is a note on the dining table, apologizing for her abrupt departure, apologies, so many apologies, one last _I love you_.

Michael comes running when he finds out, and all Jeremy can tell him, in shaky, unfamiliar ASL, is _she didn't even say goodbye_.

Later, after his dad cries and Jeremy cries and he's laying in the dark, wrapped in his dad's arms, he wonders if it would've made a difference if he'd had a voice to call for her. If she left because Jeremy's a monster who disabled his best friend. If everybody else will leave, eventually.

He wonders if Michael will leave him, too.)

-

**I can hear your misery from the other side of the building** , Jenna signs as she sits down next to Michael for their English class. She’s his only other friend fluent in ASL aside from Jeremy and Christine, and she’s Michael’s designated classroom assistant for all their shared classes. Not that he really needs it, but it’s nice to have an official excuse to talk with someone during class. **What did he do this time, offer to do your homework? Take a bullet for you?**

"He wants to go to college with me," Michael mumbles. He doesn’t like to talk out loud, because he knows his pronunciation is all wrong nowadays and it makes him feel self-conscious, but he tries to eke out some words once in a while, just to reassure people he’s not joining Jeremy on Team Voiceless. Mostly to reassure Jeremy that he didn’t take _this_ from Michael as well as his hearing. “He doesn’t even _like_ Boston.”

Jenna probably hears all the other things he can’t bother to say out loud, like how much he wants to shake the guilt out of Jeremy, how badly he wants to just let it happen so he can keep Jeremy anyway, how he hates himself so fucking much for being the weight that drags his best friend down. He wonders if she can hear Jeremy’s martyr complex bleeding everywhere, leaving stain marks and infecting his entire life.

"Well," Jenna says, cocking her head towards the hallway. **I can hear _his_ misery even louder**.

Jenna is a Grand Witch-in-training, blessed with her supernatural hearing since birth. She can hear _everything_ , from the whispered words across the hallway to the cacophony of emotions to even the aging of the school building. She says that she can’t hear thoughts, exactly, but they’re pretty easy to guess when she can hear every feeling coming off of every person. She’s the exact opposite of Michael: her world is so overflowing with sound that it hurts. 

**What, are you telling me to apologize?** Michael asks.

Jenna huffs. **No, I'm saying you need to talk to him.**

She doesn't say more than that, and he doesn’t ask for any elaboration. Jenna doesn't divulge other people's private feelings because, as she puts it, being a nosy messenger owl only results in getting shot. Sometimes Michael hates how she hears Jeremy better than he does, but it's useless to be jealous over that. Jenna just happens to be the one person who can hear everything, whether she wants to or not.

Jenna raises an eyebrow. **I hear your frustration. I'm trying to help.**

"Not mad at you," Michael says, trying his best to make sure his consonants aren't blending together. Jenna nods, catching the unspoken feelings between syllables, accepting the silent _I'm sorry it's not you it's just that I want to hear him too_. He watches Jenna tear off a page from her notebook and scratch a sigil on it, watches her mouth shape words from a language he'll never know, and the paper folds itself into a familiar miniature humanoid, two inches tall. The hat on its blank head is new. Michael pokes at the hat, watching the origami figure smack his finger away. **Nice hat.**

"I asked Gabriela to teach me how to make 'em fancier," Jenna says, and the figure takes her pen and starts writing her words down verbatim on her notebook. She waits for it to finish before taking the notebook and placing it on Michael's desk, shooing the figure after it. "I'm getting sick of learning to make obsolete potions that nobody uses anymore."

Michael watches the figure rapidly transcribe her words. Its handwriting is better than his. Faster, too. It’s a shame that the lifespan of these are only an hour. Magic is so cool. “Any potions that can, uh.” He doesn’t know how to say the next bit, so he just projects _Jeremy_ in his head as hard as he can

She slants him a tired look. “Unless there’s a potion to cure trauma and anxiety, no. His mutism is a psychological issue, not a magical one. And besides, he doesn't want to get his voice back anyway."

Michael exhales sharply through his teeth. He really wants to find a way to punch Jeremy's martyr complex out of his pretty head.

**Hard same** , Jenna signs, even though he didn't say anything. But then again, he doesn't need to. 

-

Lunch always follows the same pattern. Jeremy will come find him at his locker and they'll head to the cafeteria together, Jeremy keeping a hand on Michael's arm, squeezing in warning before anybody brushes by them from an angle Michael can't see. They'll go get lunch and find Christine and Rich already at the table. Michael will sit beside Christine and Jeremy will sit across the table so it's easy for them to sign to each other, while Christine plays interpreter when necessary. Jake is often there early, too, smiling and waving, smelling of a summer breeze or whatever is in season. Jenna usually comes alone, noise-cancelling headphones over her ears. Brooke and Chloe are always last, sitting next to each other at one end of the table. It's an unspoken rule that Chloe and Jenna always occupy opposite ends. 

Everybody else in the cafeteria gives their table a wide berth.

It's understandable, Michael supposes. They’re a quirky bunch, what with one third of all conversations happening in ASL and another third happening through texts as they sit at the same table. It's a little hectic, but it works just fine for them.

Jenna keeps her headphones on the entire time she's in the cafeteria, which is disconcerting until you get used to it. She still hears everything said at their table, and even some stuff said at other tables, but it helps her from eavesdropping on every little emotion happening in the room. She says that being surrounded by teenaged emotional whirlwinds is the worst, and Michael isn't jealous at all, seeing her twitch every so often, her mouth settling into a grim line. He doesn't need his ears to know gossip about Jenna is constant; there are only three Grand Witches in the United States, and she's going to be the fourth in a few years. She's tutored every weekend by the Grand Witch who lives in New York, which is a privilege most witches would sell their firstborn for. There are roughly a dozen witches in their school, and nearly all of them look at Jenna with envy and hatred in their eyes. 

Chloe, on the other hand, is the most popular witch in school. She's the youngest of a long line of witches descending from the original Lady Valentine, and her family specialty is incorporating spells into body art. She always has tiny runes painted on the tips of her fingernails, allowing her fingertips to crackle with magic, and she's learned her mother's trade in inking magic onto bare skin. All the girls would welcome her to sit with them for lunch, but Chloe always sits at their table, eyes often flickering to Jenna with something like _I don't hate you_ in her eyes. Michael doesn't know what Jenna hears, but she sometimes looks back at Chloe, watches her fingers running through Brooke's hair. 

Brooke occasionally sleeps through the whole lunch period. Sometimes she sleeps through classes, too. Nobody wakes her up but Chloe, who only deigns to nudge her awake—careful not to use her sharp rune-dotted fingertips—when the period ends. Brooke is a daughter of Sandman, forever on the verge of slumber, and the teachers don't know what to do with her. In a world full of humans and Ancients, with hybrids stuck somewhere between, it’s still a mostly human society, especially at Middle Borough High. All hybrids are descendants of one Ancient or another, but Brooke is a true half-blood, a rarity who teeters on being more Ancient than human, and everybody walks on eggshells around her, scared that her father will bring nightmares if they dare to make a wrong move. Michael thinks they’ve got it all wrong. He wouldn’t be scared of Sandman; he’d be scared of Chloe and Jake, if anybody laid a finger on Brooke.

Jake is human. Pretty normal all around, with exceptional looks and intellect, and nothing supernatural about him except for the weird, inhuman ability to make anybody love him. It’s not a 'Jake Dillinger is charming' deal; it’s ‘wild animals flop over to show him their bellies and even psychopaths are inexplicably fond of him after knowing him for two minutes’ deal. A ‘Jake was abandoned as a baby on a random doorstep and an Ancient that was passing by fell in love with him and adopted him at first sight’ kind of deal. So yeah, Jake. Human, charming as fuck, protective of his friends, and adopted kid of a sylph. There’s always a wisp of warm air following Jake, ruffling his hair, and the one time Jake was almost mugged, the mugger was set on fire, then picked up by a hurricane wind and blown five miles out straight into the sea. 

To clarify: neither Jake nor his Ancient mom was the one to set the mugger on fire. That was Rich. Rich is Jake’s best friend. Rich has salamander blood in him. Rich loves to joke about how one of his ancestors fucked a lizard and is never really bothered by the occasional joke about how he must have some dwarf blood in him too. But Rich never talks about how the Ancient’s blood in him had awoken three years ago, when he accidentally burned half of his dad’s skin off and sent him to the ICU. Michael lipreads the students who think that it's safe to gossip in front of a deaf kid, has seen the way they call Rich a freak, another hybrid that's a danger to the people around him, just like Jeremy Heere.

People love to whisper about Jeremy, the siren boy who accidentally rendered his best friend deaf and became a mute. The freak who is voiceless and powerless. They forget that Jeremy’s not deaf, that he hears every word even if he never says so. The whispering has died down a lot since the beginning of junior year, partly because they're kinda-maybe-sorta-definitely one of the scary-but-cool kids now. Mostly because Jenna keeps pointing Michael in the right direction to go punch the mouthy bastards. Even if that gets them both chewed out by Christine, who thinks violence is not a solution.

Christine is an angel. Figuratively speaking, of course. Human all the way through and deaf since birth, Christine is the most normal one out of all them. Michael's not sure they really deserve her, especially when she's giving him a disappointed look for breaking some asshole's nose for talking shit about Jeremy, but she's their friend for a reason. She proves that every time she wheels around to lecture the poor bastard clutching his bleeding nose until he cries and apologizes for his bullshit. Michael fucking loves her.

And then there's Michael, who's as human as it gets. Not as magically charming as Jake, or as saintly as Christine, but he's there. Sitting amongst his friends, laughing along with them. He can't hear a thing and barely remembers the sound of his own voice, but he's pretty happy with his life. 

And if he sometimes dreams of kissing Jeremy, of hearing Jeremy's voice one more time, nobody else has to know.

-

Sometimes he dreams that Jeremy loves him back. Those hurt, afterwards, when he’s awake in bed and aching for something he can’t have in reality.

But sometimes he dreams of _this_ , which is worse.

“Anything you want,” Jeremy tells him, eyes full of remorse. He kisses Michael and there’s no love there. “Anything, anything.”

_Not like this_. Michael tries to say, but his voice is gone. _Please not like this._

“I’ll do anything for you,” Jeremy says, dropping to his knees, running his hands up Michael’s thighs. He looks like he’s begging for forgiveness and Michael is paralyzed, trying to scream, trying to move, helpless to stop Jeremy from leaning in and atoning with his mouth when a gentle hand takes Michael’s and a clear voice says, “Michael, look at me.”

Jeremy’s gone, and Michael stands there, shuddering, his whole heart carved out and lacerated into shreds. He feels dizzy with heartbreak, the nightmare still clinging to his insides.

“Michael, look at me.”

He barely manages to turn his head to look into Brooke’s kind eyes, barely manages to hear her say in such a sad voice, “Oh, Michael,” before he bursts into tears. 

Brooke hugs him, pets his hair and rubs his back, lets him cry on her shoulder until he’s empty and hollowed out, drained. She arranges his dreamscape into something softer, full of starlight and crackling fires, a mountain of soft blankets arranged as a little nest. She smiles, apologetic. “This is the most I can do.” She summons a few cotton candy clouds to float around them. “I can’t make people dream specific things like Father can.”

“This is good,” Michael croaks. It’s so weird to feel so awake in his own dream. He’s seen Brooke walk through his dreams a couple times, but mostly she’d just waved at him and left him to party with the dinosaurs and stuff. This is new. “This is like a lucid dream, right?”

“Yeah, I can go dreamwalking into others’ dreams and pull you out to a lucid state, maybe decorate your dream a little, but that’s about it.” She gives him a pillow made of clouds to snuggle. It’s nice. “I usually don’t interfere—Father says it’s rude—but you were upset, and I don’t like to ignore people in nightmares.” She makes sure Michael is looking at her when she says, “I wanted to help, but I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay, you saved me from a shitty dream,” Michael says, and then realizes, “I don’t need to read your lips. I can hear you.” He’s never heard her voice before. “Holy shit, I can hear you.”

Brooke laughs. It’s a pretty sound. Michael could cry from how much he’s missed hearing real laughter. She scoots closer, beaming. “I’ve never heard you speak this loudly before.”

“It’s hard to talk when I can’t hear myself. Shit. I can hear my own voice, holy fuck.” Michael hugs Brooke before he can stop himself. “Thank you so much.”

Brooke giggles, sounding surprised and delighted. “I would have come to your dreams much sooner if I knew you’d be this happy about it.” 

“Your voice is really nice,” Michael tells her earnestly.

Brooke squeaks, pleased, and shoves his shoulder. “Sweet-talker.” 

They lounge in the warmth of his dream, talking in the firelight, watching a shower of shooting stars light up the dreamscape as Michael talks and listens for the first time in five years. He isn’t sure whether they’ve been there for minutes or hours when Brooke says, quiet and careful, “Michael, you have feelings for Jeremy, right?”

“There’s no way for me to pretend I don't, after what you’ve seen,” Michael says. A mortifying thought occurs to him. “Oh god, please tell me you haven’t seen any of my sex dreams.”

Brooke goes pink and shakes her head. “No, I’m pretty good at avoiding those.” She covers her face with her hands. “But sometimes I walk into one. It’s awkward.”

“I bet.” He can’t help but ask, “Anybody I know?”

She knocks his foot with one of hers in chastisement. “I’m not telling!”

Oh, that sounds like a yes. He almost wants to ask if it was Jeremy’s, but he’s pretty sure asking Brooke about other people’s dreams is like asking Jenna about other people’s emotions. Invasive and rude. “I’m kidding, I don’t need to know that.” 

Brooke rolls her eyes, but she wraps another soft, weightless blanket around Michael’s shoulders, her eyes soft with worry. “Does your bad dream have anything to do with why you’re not telling Jeremy about your feelings?”

Michael thinks back to the nightmare. It seems so far away now, distant and faded. It’s not as awful to think about with Brooke here, keeping him warm and safe, so he says the words out loud for once. “I don’t want him to feel obligated to return my feelings.” He curls up, hugging his knees to his chest. “He just—he won’t forgive himself, even though I’ve already forgiven him, and I don’t think he ever will. He’s trying to spend the rest of his life making it up to me, and every time I tell him he doesn’t need to, he doesn’t _listen_. How am I supposed to tell him, when he’s like that? How am I supposed to tell him that I,” he chokes on his words, “that I _love_ him, when I know he’ll stay with me whether he wants to or not? I can’t tell him that. I won’t.”

Brooke shushes him, resting her head upon his, wrapping her arms around him as she rocks them both. She doesn’t give him any false promises or empty condolences. Just hugs him tight, lets him cry until he wakes up, gasping, unable to hear the sound of his voice once again.

-

At school, Brooke smiles and tells him, making sure he can read her lips, “I’ll find you again, if you want.”

Michael nods, fervent. It’s all he needs to say.

-

_Brooke visited you, didn’t she_ , Chloe writes neatly on his notebook as they wait for physics class to start. Christine isn’t here yet, so there’s just the two of them sitting in their corner, unbothered by the other students trickling in. 

Michael scratches a quick _yes_ below her writing.

_She said she’ll visit you again?_ Chloe asks, nails drumming against her desk. Michael wonders what her nail art of the week is hiding. He’s seen lightning crackle from her fingertips the last time someone tried to harass her. 

Michael underlines his previous answer.

Chloe’s eyes flash with something he can’t quite read. It looks a lot like concern and anger tangled and wrapped up in resignation. _Is it gonna be a habit?_

He smooths away the flicker of irritation that her words evoke, instead opting to write _worried that the gay guy will steal your girlfriend?_

_I have better things to worry about_ , Chloe writes. _So don't make me worry about whether you're hiding in dreamspace because you're having trouble with reality._

_I didn't know you cared_ , Michael writes, half-joking, half-serious. He offers an explanation. _I just miss hearing_. _Dreams are the only place I can get it back._

Her eyes flicker from the paper to Michael’s ears as she processes the information. After a while, she nods. _Just don't overdo it. The others would freak if you stopped waking up or something._

He feels a little touched by that. He makes an effort to give a voice to his appreciation. "Thank you."

Chloe’s eyebrows go up in surprise. Then she smirks, turning away to look at her phone just as Christine is rushes in, safely sliding into her seat before the class starts. As the teacher starts writing on the blackboard, Michael tears the page out of his notebook, crumpling it in his fist. He doesn’t want Jeremy to see the words written on the paper by some freak coincidence. He doesn't want to hurt Jeremy, even by accident. 

Sometimes, he’s pretty sure that he’s just as irrevocably tied to Jeremy as Jeremy is to Michael. Forever trying to reassure each other, trying to say _I’m okay_. Trying to fix each other anyway.

-

“I don’t know if we're just making things worse,” Michael rambles as he paces, waves lapping at his ankles, Brooke sitting a few feet away on a fluffy blanket that doesn’t belong on a beach. He kicks at the water, which is neither too cold nor too warm. “Like, are we too codependent? Do we need to grow apart a bit? I don’t know. I don't wanna think what we have is like, a _bad_ thing.”

“You said it yourself: you don’t think it’s a _good_ thing for him,” Brooke points out. “It’s probably not good for you, either.”

Michael groans. “Yeah, I know.” He trudges out of the water and onto the sand, marveling at how fine it is, like dust. He looks down at Brooke and realizes that he’s been ranting for a while. “Uh, shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you into my therapist, I swear.”

Brooke grins, patting the space on the blanket next to her so he’ll sit down. “It’s okay, I like hearing you talk. We don’t do much of that when we’re awake.”

“Yeah.” He remembers what Chloe said, earlier. “Chloe said it would be shitty of me to stop waking up because I like dreams too much, but is that even possible? You can't actually keep me asleep, can you?"

“I can't control how long others sleep.” Brooke looks down, starts drawing a pattern on the sand. "I'm the one who could stop waking up."

Michael blinks, alarmed. “Seriously?”

Brooke nods. “One of Father’s children, well, one of my half-sisters, I guess? It was decades ago. She just spent more and more time asleep than awake, then she stopped waking up. Just slept for the rest of her life.” She smooths her sand drawing away. “Sometimes I think I understand why she did it.” There’s a faraway look in her eyes. “Nobody can hurt us, here.”

Michael listens to the waves crashing in, the sound of Brooke’s breathing, and thinks he understands, too. It would be so easy to stay here, forever.

“But I wouldn’t ever do that to her,” Brooke says, soft but steely with determination. “I’d never choose to stay here when I could be awake with Chloe.”

It’s so easy to see how deep her love runs, how effortless her devotion is. Michael thinks of Jeremy, how he smiles like the sun when he’s at his happiest, how he smells like sea breeze and wildflowers. He knows he’d do the same as Brooke. He’d choose Jeremy, too. Even if that meant leaving this sanctuary. Even if it meant he had to lose everything. 

-

**You’ve been having dream parties with Brooke?** Jeremy signs at him during a break after their third attempt at Level 9 of Apocalypse of the Damned. They’re making slow progress on it. 

Michael sets down his bottle of soda to sign back. **We’re bonding. It’s a thing friends do, like us right now**. He gestures at the game console. **Did you never get a visit?**

**Once, but I didn't ask her to come back** , Jeremy replies.

A thought occurs to Michael. **When she visited you, did you guys talk to each other? Verbally?**

**You know I can't do verbal conversation** , Jeremy signs, looking puzzled. 

**Not even in dreams?**

Jeremy furrows his brow in confusion, staring at Michael while Michael tries his best not to squirm. Then the dots must connect, because Jeremy's eyes go wide. **You can hear her?**

**Yeah. It’s pretty cool**. Michael hopes his feigned nonchalance is convincing.

Jeremy hesitates. **That’s great. I’m glad for you**.

He certainly doesn’t look very happy about it, but Michael doesn’t dare point that out. He signs **Brooke is really nice** instead.

**I know** , Jeremy signs. He looks up at Michael, gently biting into his lower lip in a way that drives Michael crazy, then signs, **what sound do you miss most?**

There’s no good answer to that question. No answer that won’t lead to Jeremy hanging his head in guilt, no answer that will satisfy both of them. Michael wishes he could lie, tell Jeremy that he doesn’t miss sound anymore, that he doesn’t wake up some mornings drowning in silence, but he can’t. He knows Jeremy won’t believe it.

So he goes with the truth. “You.”

Jeremy freezes, eyes wide. It takes him a while to point at himself with a trembling hand. **Me?**

“I miss your voice,” Michael says, hoping he’s keeping his words at a decent volume. He doesn’t want Mr. Heere to be overhearing this from his home office. “I loved your voice.” The voice that Jeremy hates. “I still love it.”

_I love you_ , he doesn’t say. _Always have, always will_.

Jeremy looks down, hair falling into his eyes, chewing on his lip. He’s the most beautiful thing Michael will ever know and never be able to have, because to Jeremy, Michael is the one thing he did wrong. The one thing he fucked up. Michael is Jeremy’s sin, to be atoned for until they die, and Michael can’t make himself any more of Jeremy’s duty than he already is.

**I wish I could use it** , Jeremy finally signs. **I wish I could make you hear it**.

_I wish I weren’t the biggest fuck up of your life_ , Michael thinks, weary. He swallows the words back down like they’re knives, feels himself bleed out from the inside.

-

(Jeremy goes to Jake's mom. He goes to Jenna. He goes to Chloe.

_Will these help?_ he writes, indicating the tomes he's smuggled out of the magical studies library's Restricted Collection, which underaged patrons normally can't access. He bribed Madeline from French with his entire monthly allowance for her to help him sneak in with her stealth spells.

"Jesus, you could get into some serious trouble with this," Chloe remarks, but her eyes are already hungry and curious, too invested in honing her skills to turn him down. She runs a finger over the spine of one of the books, eyes going pensive as she regards Jeremy. "You know that the best I can do is make some things easier for him, right? I can't fix everything."

No, not even the Grand Witch who'd taken a look at Michael years ago could. The risk of permanent brain damage was too great for her to attempt restoring Michael's hearing. Michael's parents gave up, after that.

Jeremy can't give up.

_Please just try_ , he writes, and Chloe sighs. Nods her assent.)

-

Maybe they’re better off without each other. Michael tries not to obsess over that thought too much, but the idea sinks its claws into his brain and refuses to leave, gouging deeper and deeper into his heart every time he so much as looks in Jeremy’s direction.

It’s that thought that stops him from grabbing his phone when a dripping Rich turns up on Michael’s doorstep after dinner on a rainy Wednesday night. Jeremy lives fifteen minutes away, and it would be so easy to invite him to join their impromptu gaming session, but Michael doesn’t call him. Instead, he lends Rich a dry shirt and shorts, then takes him down to the basement. His mom says hi to Rich on their way downstairs, telling him he’s welcome to stay overnight if he needs to, and reminds them both not to stay up too late.

“I can probably go back home in like, a couple hours? He should be all shouted out by then,” Rich says, settling into a beanbag chair, the jittery, nervous edge bleeding out of him. Rich’s preferred shelter from his dad’s drunken episodes is Jake’s place, but Jake lives across town and Michael lives only two blocks away, so it’s a fitting emergency shelter for when Jake’s unavailable or the weather is shit, like tonight. “He was pretty wasted when I left.”

Michael types [u can sleep here if u want] on his phone then shows his screen to Rich, who laughs and scratches the back of his neck.

“Thanks, man. But I still need to go make sure he hasn’t like, died of alcohol poisoning.” He shrugs like he’s used to it. “No biggie. I’ll take you up on it if he’s still awake later.”

Michael sighs but nods, putting his phone down and handing Rich a controller. Mario Kart is their shared choice of emotional therapy, and it’s a lot more effective to let Rich hurl pink shells at his Luigi than try to talk about Rich’s family situation.

They’ve played for nearly an hour when Michael is bombed off of the tracks again for the fifth time in a row, which gets him snarling, “Oh fuck you, you piece of shit!”

The game pauses. Michael blinks at the screen and then turns to look at Rich, who’s paused the game to double over wheezing in laughter, his entire body shaking from how hard he’s chortling. Michael leans over to thump him on the back twice, then when he has Rich’s attention, he signs **what?** at him. 

“Dude, I’ve never heard you swear before,” Rich explains, gasping for breath between his words. It makes reading his lips a little difficult. “You barely talk out loud in the first place, so I’ve heard you speak like, twice. You actually swearing in a volume louder than a mumble is gold.”

Michael feels his face go a little warm. He just shoves Rich’s shoulder, which Rich doesn’t seem to mind. 

“Oh my god, you should do that more often,” Rich says with a wide grin, and Michael feels his spine tense up. He knows Rich doesn’t mean to mock him, but he’s seen people roll their eyes at his words before. “I’ve never enjoyed being cussed at so much.”

Michael just shrugs at him, then indicates his controller and the TV screen to ask if they can keep playing.

Rich doesn’t restart the game. “Bro, you can talk to me. You know that, right?”

Michael fumbles for his phone. [i cant hear if i say shit wrong or too loud]

“Dude, it’s your basement. I think you can be a bit loud. I’ll tell you if you shout.” Rich pokes the phone screen. “It’s gotta be easier than you typing all this shit.”

[i sound weird]

Rich takes a long look at those words, then looks at Michael, who flushes under the scrutiny. He hates this, the vulnerability of putting his insecurities out there, but if he can’t trust a friend who’s sitting in his basement on a weeknight to avoid their shitty alcoholic dad, then who else is he going to trust? He needs to branch out, trust people aside from Jeremy. He needs to grow up.

Rich sets down his controller. “You know I’m the last person to laugh at you about how you sound, right?” He taps his lower lip. “I’m the kid with a lisp. I’ve been laughed at for my entire life.”

Michael stares for a solid minute before he finally manages to say, “I forgot about that.”

“How can you forget that?” Rich actually laughs. “I mean, doesn’t my mouth look weird when you do your lipreading thing?”

“I mean, I can tell,” Michael says, and doesn't let himself worry about whether he sounds like an idiot. “But I got so used to it? It’s not super obvious.”

Rich is grinning so hard that it’s infectious; Michael can feel the corners of his mouth turning up, buoyed by Rich’s glee. “Well, you don't sound super obviously weird, either. Makes us a pretty slick duo, dontcha think?"

"Jake would be jealous," Michael says, the words coming faster and easier. He might not say them exactly right, but he's okay with that.

Rich raises an eyebrow. "Dude, if anybody'll be jealous of the shitty pronunciation alliance, it'll be Jeremy Heere. And not because he can't talk." He pokes Michael's knee. "He'll totally mope if I steal you as best bro."

Michael stomps down on the twinge in his chest and forces himself to shrug. "Maybe," he says, putting effort into the enunciation, "some space will do us some good."

"Woah." Rich rears back a little in shock, his eyes darting over Michael's face. "Shit, you're serious."

He wants to take the words back, wants to say _let's not talk about this ever again_ and turn back to the TV screen. Instead, he stays still and looks Rich in the eye, doesn't say anything at all.

After a long wordless moment, Rich crosses his arms and says, "He won't like that."

"But he'd do it anyway," Michael says, and he hates how true his words are, how angry the truth makes him. "He'd stay away if I told him to."

Rich doesn't deny that. "Do _you_ want space?"

No, Michael doesn't. Michael wants Jeremy to stay, to never leave, to love Michael for the rest of their lives. He wants Jeremy, more than anything else in the world. 

He wants Jeremy to be able to say no. Wants him to choose Michael anyway.

And maybe it's time for Michael to stop wanting these things, to stop being selfish. Maybe they need space and independence and lives that don't revolve around each other. Maybe they need to stop trying to fix each other.

"It's not what I want," Michael says, "but it's what we need."

Rich cocks his head, arms still crossed, lips pressed into a thin line before he finally heaves a sigh, whole body slumping with the weight of it. "Ugh, you guys are so complicated. I mean, I get it. It's hard to have a normal relationship after," he hesitates, "screwing up another person's life permanently."

"Hearing loss isn't a death sentence," Michael says, scowling. 

"Yeah, but he changed you in a way nobody can undo," Rich says, absently rubbing his bare arms, eyes faraway. "He changed your _life_."

Michael doesn't say _I changed his life, too_. Doesn't talk about Jeremy at twelve, choking on the words that wouldn't come, self-loathing and guilt and fear locking his voice away. How Michael had seen the look of relief on Jeremy's face when they were both trapped into silence and thought _what have we done to each other,_ and never stopped thinking it ever since.

"It was an accident," Michael says instead.

"Yeah, it's nobody's fault, but you're never gonna be the same." Rich stretches his arm with his palm facing outwards, and sparks of flame lick up his fingers. Michael is so transfixed by the sight that he misses Rich's mouth moving at first. "—of yourself."

"Sorry, I missed that."

"It teaches you to be scared of yourself," Rich repeats. He folds his outstretched hand into a fist, extinguishing the flames. "Hurting people you care about, I mean."

_He didn't hurt me_ , he thinks, but it sounds like a lie. "I just want him to be more comfortable as himself."

"Jeremy Heere? You've got your work cut out for you," Rich says, patting Michael's shoulder in commiseration. "You don't have to do this alone, bro. You both deserve to be happy."

Michael offers him a wobbly smile. His throat is too tight and he doesn't trust himself to articulate any words properly right now, so instead he signs **thank you**.

Rich grins and signs back **you're welcome**.

-

The next day, he sits at lunch with everybody else and tells Jeremy **go, I know you want to**. 

Jeremy looks like Michael's told him to go shoot a newborn kitten. **But what about you?**

**I don't even like Westerns. Come back and tell me about it later.**

Christine cuts down Jeremy's protest with a hand on his shoulder and a perfect look of hopefulness that will be crushed to bits if Jeremy says no. Michael is so proud of her. **I don't have anybody else to go with.** Which is a bald-faced lie. Jake would totally watch it, but Jake is pretending he has bro-bonding to do with Rich today. "Please come with me?"

Jeremy shoots Michael a worried look, so Michael signs **you don't need to keep me company. Just go and enjoy yourself for once**.

There's a flash of something—hurt? resentment? it's hard to tell—in Jeremy's eyes before his shoulders slump and his lips press together in a thin line. **Fine, I'll go**. 

Michael doesn't like the resigned way Jeremy signs that, but he decides not to argue the issue anymore and just nods.

-

**Are we sure this is a good idea?** Christine asks in study hall. Their desks are pushed to face each other in the back of the classroom, their customary seats that Mrs. Calloway allows only because they're her quietest students. 

**It's a good idea!** Michael signs back.

**Better than you two having an actual conversation about your history and issues and working on it together?** Christine asks, looking exasperated.

Well, okay, forcing Jeremy to spend more time with friends aside from Michael via friendly coercion is probably not ideal or healthy or any of the things that Christine generally prefers. But it's a small thing. Jeremy going with Christine to see one movie that doesn't have any subtitled showings in their town is small fry compared to the inevitable conversation about how they both need to graduate from codependency. Michael wants to work his way up to that. Baby steps.

Also, yeah, he's a coward for not telling Jeremy this outright from the beginning. Sue him.

**I just need some time** , he signs.

Christine sighs, but still nods in acceptance. **I just worry that he'll get the wrong idea.**

**Like what?**

**Like he might have done something wrong** , Christine signs rapidly. **That you're mad at him. Like you don't want to be around him anymore.**

It's extreme. But Jeremy can be...sensitive. It's plausible. Fuck.

**I'll talk to him over the weekend** , Michael capitulates. From the way Christine beams, he's sure that's what she was aiming for. 

**You two are going to be okay** , Christine signs with a fond, confident smile. Michael wishes he could share even half that surety. **You both want what's best for each other. It's going to work out.**

Maybe. Michael hopes so. He hopes they can become two separate people capable of friendship that isn't steeped in guilt, that they can be best friends again without the shadow of one mistake looming over them both for the rest of their lives. And if this space that Michael is trying to dig between them is what they need, if they can't ever go back to sleepovers and weekend gaming marathons and slushies at six in the morning, he hopes that they can be friends. Being friends would be enough.

He knows he can't ask for more than that.

-

As soon as the last school bell rings, Christine leaves to haul Jeremy off to the local cinema. Michael takes his time zipping up his backpack and leaving the classroom, taking care not to crash into any other students enthusiastic to go home. He stops by his locker and realizes he needs to give Jenna's notebook back. He texts her to ask where she is, and gets a prompt reply saying that she's in Mr. Reyes's classroom and that she can't move right now. 

[want me to come drop it off?] he asks.

[Please do]

Michael walks down a floor and makes his way to Mr. Reyes's classroom. He doesn't take Drama, but he's picked Jeremy up from there so many times, it's natural to push the door open and walk inside. Mr. Reyes isn't there, which is good; Michael's always found him overly talkative and exhausting to lipread. 

Jenna's sitting next to the far wall, Brooke fast asleep against her shoulder.

"Huh?" Michael asks.

Jenna probably hears a myriad of questions from that single utterance. She looks up from her phone and scowls. **Shut up.**

He's just about to ask if Chloe knows about this when his peripheral vision catches movement, and he turns to see Chloe herself stepping inside, and he catches her mouth moving in what seems like, "—ding machine's out of Kitkats." 

Michael holds his breath for a few seconds.

Chloe ignores him and strides in, dropping two Snickers bars and a Twix bar onto the desk in front of Jenna. She drops into the seat in front of her, seemingly unbothered by her girlfriend napping on their friend's shoulder. Michael is not entirely sure what the hell is going on.

"What's wrong with you?" Chloe asks him, nonplussed, and he lets out his breath again.

He holds up the notebook that has Jenna's name on the front to indicate why he's here, then trudges forward to hold it out to Jenna. Chloe takes it instead, which. What.

"In your bag?" Chloe asks, and Jenna nods an affirmative, her eyes on her phone, so Chloe ducks down to tug Jenna's backpack open and deposit the notebook inside. She zips it all the way closed before sitting upright again, and Michael is pretty sure he's gaping right now.

"Please crank down on your incredulity, it hurts my ears," Jenna says, eyes still on her phone but turning her face towards Michael so he can read her lips. She's taking care to not shift under Brooke, which is probably why she's talking instead of signing. "We eat at the same lunch table, Michael. Yes, we talk to each other sometimes. No, Chloe doesn't hate me. I don't hate her, either."

"Oh, so you finally accept that I don't hate you. Took you long enough," Chloe snipes, unwrapping one of the Snickers bars. "For someone who can hear everything, you can be so deaf sometimes." She pauses, then looks at Michael. "Sorry."

He waves it off to show he's not offended. 

"Most people in your situation would hate me." Michael's getting the feeling that Jenna's not looking at Chloe on purpose, now.

Chloe narrows her eyes, painted fingernails drumming against Jenna's desk. Brooke is still sleeping. "Anybody with common sense would know that my mom's shitty relationship with me is not your fault."

"Common sense is rare these days." Probably hearing the awkwardness echoing in Michael's mind, Jenna's eyes flicker up to his, then back down to her phone. "Didn't you have something for Michael?"

"Shit, right." Chloe digs into her own bag and grabs something, then beckons Michael over to take a seat. After he drags a chair over, she holds out an empty hand and says, "Give me your glasses for a sec." 

Michael hesitates. He can't see shit without his glasses, and being deaf _and_ blind is something he avoids unless he's in the shower or in bed.

"I'll give it back to you if it's too much," Chloe promises. "Just clap your hands if you want them back. I just need a minute to try something." 

He looks at Jenna, who looks up from her phone to nod at him.

After another hesitant second, he takes his glasses off and holds them out for Chloe to take. He can see the blurry shape of her outlined against the sunlight streaming in from the windows behind her, but he has no clue what she's doing. It's silent and he can't see anything, and the last time he felt so naked and alone was four years ago when his glasses were broken during PE. Even then, Jeremy had immediately glued himself to Michael's side, tracing words onto Michael's palm to talk to him, to keep him calm. He'd refused to let go of Michael until Michael's mom drove over to pick them up, emergency glasses in the glove compartment. The two of them spent weeks after that day learning morse code, just in case they ever needed it, Jeremy stubbornly tapping words against Michael's knuckles, over and over. He still occasionally taps familiar patterns against Michael's arm, _hello, I'm right here, thank you_.

Michael memorized the pattern for _I love you_ back then, looked up from the booklet to see Jeremy's blue eyes intently focused on the morse alphabet, teeth digging delicately into his lower lip, and he'd realized, _oh, I do_. 

He wishes Jeremy were here right now, his fingers tapping against Michael's palm, pressed warmly against Michael's side, smelling of fresh cotton and seabreeze and wildflowers. 

God, Michael is pathetic.

He flinches at the contact on the back of his hand, then realizes it's the leg of his glasses, so he grabs it and shoves his corrected eyesight back onto his face. Chloe stares back at him, her gaze fixed on the side of his glasses. 

"Can you see any differences?" Chloe demands, and woah, weird smoke drawings float from her mouth and dissolve away when she talks.

He doesn't even know how to explain that, so he grabs a spare piece of graphing paper from his bag and draws a stick figure representation of what he just saw, captioned with a short explanation. Chloe scowls when she finishes looking at it.

"Okay, it's probably not the right incantation if I want actual words," she grumbles. "Here, lemme erase that. One sec."

He surrenders his glasses for ten seconds, then gets his eyesight sans smoke signals restored. 

_Did you just try to give me subtitle glasses?_ He scribbles on the piece of paper.

"Was worth a shot," Chloe says, rolling her eyes. "Dammit, I was so close. That book was really promising."

"I think you should try a different combination of runes with the lunar script," Jenna says, studying what looks like a load of magic symbols on a scrap of paper. "And old Norse isn't effective on most modern objects anyway." She writes something down on the bottom of the paper and shoves it towards Chloe. "Interesting take on the structure, though. What book did you use as a reference?"

"Uh," Chloe says, and Jenna must hear something interesting, because her eyebrows shoot up and she jerks a little, jostling Brooke. 

Brooke stirs, eyes sliding open. She covers her yawn with a hand and she must have asked something, because Chloe responds, "Yeah, we're done." She gives Jenna a significant look. "We're going home. Wanna join us?"

Jenna looks at Chloe for a long moment, then shakes her head. "I'm good."

Chloe purses her lips, then transfers her focus to Michael. "What about you? You going?"

Michael glances at Jenna, who just gives him a quick shoo gesture, and he nods. He writes _car in parking lot_. 

"We'll walk you there," Chloe decides, standing up. Brooke follows suit, petting Jenna's shoulder as she leans close to murmur something. Michael takes this as his cue to start moving, so he waves goodbye to Jenna and follows the other two girls outside.

The walk to the parking lot is mostly quiet, as far as Michael's aware, and it's only when they reach Michael's car parked near the front of the lot that he realizes he didn't thank Chloe for trying to magic his glasses for him. He makes sure she looks at him when he says, "Thanks for, you know." He taps the side of his glasses.

Chloe shrugs. "It's no big deal. Thank me when I find something that works."

"If only you and Jenna could actually work together," Brooke says, sighing.

"It's not her fault my mom's mad at me for not having Grand Witch potential," Chloe says. "And practical magic is my forte. I can do this."

Michael can't help but pull his phone and type [what about jeremy] and show it to her.

"What, can I come up with speech aid magic?" She crosses her arms and gives Michael a long look. "It's not like I haven't considered it before. No ideas for now." She shakes her head. "You both are just—look," she says, expression somber. "Some things just can't be fixed."

_I know, I know, but I can't stop myself from hoping_ , he wants to say. He settles for [thanks anyway] and waves goodbye at them as they walk to Chloe's car, Brooke shooting a worried glance at him over her shoulder.

He climbs into his car and takes a second to press his forehead to the steering wheel, silences that wretched, hopeful voice inside him, asking _but what if we could fix this, what if I could keep him_. 

-

[how was the movie??] 

[It was cool, but the ending was a total downer :(]

[awww that sucks. but did u have fun?]

[Yeah, I guess. Christine cried.]

~~[u know u can tell me u had fun w/out me i wont mind]~~ [only christine??]

[Ugh fine, I cried too.]

~~[i wish i couldve seen that]~~ [no need to pretend u have a stiff upper lip bro, i know ur a softie on the inside. and outside]

[I'm working out now!!! I can do real pushups and everything!]

~~[god i know its the hottest thing i ever]~~ [okay buddy its not a competition lol]

[I'll crush you tomorrow in Smash]

[uhhhhh i gotta help jake tmrw remember??]

[Shit, I forgot about that. Want some backup?]

~~[yes]~~ [nah man u know if us three get together we never get shit done]

[...True. Saturday?]

~~[i'm not ready to tell you]~~ [sry i promised brooke a mall trip! u can join if u want]

[It's fine. I think dad wants to do a family thing that day anyway.]

~~[just yell at me if u want] [its only a few days why are we like this] [i'm sorry] [just let me figure this out] [I don't want to stay away from you either]~~ [my sunday is reserved for u my player two]

[I hope you're ready to cry on Sunday when you lose]

[pfft u can TRY, i'll falcon punch ur yoshi ass]

[Who said we're sticking to Smash? I'm switching us over to Mario Party :)]

[noooooo why would u do this to me]

[You neglected me and I'm exacting my revenge.]

~~[honestly i cant tell if ur serious] [r u mad at me??] [i'm just trying to fix this] [i'm sorry i'm so selfish] [is it dumb that i want u to be angry at me] [i love you so much] [are we gonna be okay]~~

[Michael? I'm joking, we can play Smash if you hate Party that much] 

~~[god stop always giving into me] [i hate that ur like this] [i hate that i made u like this]~~

[Michael did I say something wrong]

~~[no it's me] [i'm so fucking sorry]~~ [sry got distracted!!! no worries i'm sure i'll find a way to win u in the hell game, just u wait]

[Okay :)]

~~ [i'm so sorry i love you] ~~

-

Friday afternoon is sunny and calm, the open windows of Jake's house filling the whole place with warm sunlight. There's a light breeze blowing throughout the house, a curl of wind tousling Jake's hair. Jake ushers Michael into the dining room, where they can dump their stacks of library books on the wide dining table and sit across from each other.

"Sylphie, I'm home!" Jake says, and Michael feels the wind brush his cheek in greeting. Jake looks at Michael. "She says it's nice to see you, and to make yourself at home."

Michael makes an effort to use his voice. "Thank you." 

"She's sorry she can't talk to you properly, but she's busy in Ohio right now," Jake says. It's flattering to hear that an Ancient would actually be apologetic for not conjuring a physical form to interact with her son's deaf friend, but Jake's mom has always been an anomaly, from what Michael's heard. It's rare for an Ancient to be human-friendly, rarer still in the 21st century. Ancients that adopt human children that they have no prior relation to? There's less than two hundred cases documented across the whole world. 

"It's okay. Uh, good luck with Ohio," Michael says to the empty air. It's always weird to talk to an invisible force that's apparently in several places at once. 

"She says thanks," Jake says, beaming. He doesn't seem bothered by playing telephone with his mom and friend. "Ah, she's going now. Bye, Sylphie!"

"Bye," Michael says inanely.

Jake grabs the first book off of his pile and flips it open, eyes scanning through the pages for a while before he shrugs and slides it towards Michael. "Old books suck."

Michael takes a look. White background, tiny black serif font, and long packed paragraphs. It's every dyslexic person's nightmare. He shares a commiserating look with Jake before he pulls out his laptop and gets to work.

This genealogy assignment is, in Michael's opinion, a waste of time. It's a goldmine for all the hybrid kids searching up their Ancient ancestry to gloat about, or even a fun project for the human kids who end up finding out their great¹⁴-grandparent was an elf or something, but it's just tedium for people like Michael, whose ancestry is most definitely pure human and a pain in the ass to document thanks to his immigrant lineage, and Jake, whose parents were criminals that went on the run sixteen years ago and never came back.

Students who don't want to research their own family tree are allowed to choose from an approved list of historical figures and research them instead, so Jake's chosen Al Capone, and Michael's gone for Hellen Keller, because he loves irony.

Michael's in charge of gathering information from the books that Jake has trouble reading and typing it all up, while Jake returns the favor by doing all of Michael's online research for him. They work well together, communicating via online messenger because lipreading is a hassle when they're both so busy, and Jake can't read Michael's handwriting anyway. 

Michael glances up from his third book to see a new message from Jake, who's focused on his own laptop screen.

[did you know the last prime minister of cameroon is brooke's half-sibling?]

Michael chokes on a laugh. [srsly????]

[sandman gets around!!] They both laugh at each other over their laptops.

[has ur mom ever met brooke's dad??] Michael asks, curious. He's never seen Sandman; the only human who's really met him in person in their town is Brooke's mom. 

[uhhh like twice? I think?] [she doesn't leave america much and he doesn't come here often] [but he visits brooke through dreams a lot, so that's cool] Michael glances up to check Jake's expression at that. There's no bitterness there, but there's a slightly wistful look in his eyes. [she deserves a lot of love]

Michael ponders what to say to that, and settles with [u do too], then [u know ur like, the most loved human being ever, right?] [everybody in this town loves u, even that misanthrope granny on jeremy's street]

[loved by everybody but my own parents, right?] Jake types back. Michael looks at him with a thousand half-baked retorts clogging his throat, and Jake smiles sheepishly. "Sorry, that wasn't cool of me. This assignment's just super boring, you know?"

Michael tries to make his tongue and voice cooperate with him. Takes it slow, so he doesn't mess up. "They fucking missed out. Everybody who actually has a heart loves you."

Jake laughs, one hand raking through his hair, the other nervously fiddling with his jacket collar. "Rich said you sound awesome when you swear." He signs **thank you** as he says that. "I'm happy, really. Sylphie's done so much to take care of me, she loves me better than a lot of human parents do. My life is cool as it is." He sighs. "It's just, I had a talk about this kinda stuff yesterday and it's stuck to my brain, sorry! I'm totally being a downer."

**No problem** , Michael signs. Then, **talk with who?**

Jake's eyes go wide in a deer-in-headlights expression. "Uhh. It's private." **Sorry.**

There's something about the way Jake's eyes immediately dart away from Michael's face that rouses his suspicion, because parental abandonment sounds suspiciously a lot like—

-

(Jeremy digs through the shelves of the magical studies library, trying not to let himself dwell on Michael at Jake's house. Michael who seems to be avoiding Jeremy. Michael, who just might be about to leave after all.

He doesn't let himself cry. Focuses on moving onto the next shelf. He has only twenty minutes before the head librarian comes back to lock the Restricted Collection, and he needs to sneak out before she sees him. He's skimming through books of Ancients from the Dark Ages when he hears a faint voice calling _here, are you looking for me_.

The voice is coming from a plain gray book on the bottom shelf, and the title seems to be written in Japanese. Jeremy gingerly opens the book, and nothing happens.

Then black smoke seems to billow out from the pages, the voice louder, clear in Jeremy's head. _Boy, you have potential_. The voice hums. _Oh, the siren blood is strong in you. With just the right adjustment, with my power, it could do so much_. 

_Who are you?_ Jeremy thinks, and to his surprise, the voice introduces itself. Its name is a collection of sounds that Jeremy's never heard before. His best approximation of it is: _a squip?_

_Probably the best you can do in the human tongue_ , the voice says amicably. _And yes, I can hear you. I can hear your thoughts, to be exact. But if you want your voice to be heard_ , it says slyly, _that can be arranged, too_.

_You can do that?_

_I can do so many things,_ the voice purrs. _And if you promise me your body to house me, your voice for my words, I can give you anything within the laws of this plane of existence_. 

It sounds like a scam. It sounds like a delicious poison, too good to be true. 

_You shall still be the rightful owner of your physical self_ , the voice coaxes. _I will merely share it. In return, anything you want_.

He should close the book, should say no. But— _anything?_

_Anything, anything._

Jeremy opens his mouth. Makes a wish.)

-

Jake's head snaps up, gaze swinging wildly around, and Michael looks up to see that the windows are all slamming shut. He looks back at Jake, alarm filling his head. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Jake replies, standing from his seat, and Michael follows suit. "Sylphie? Sylphie, what's wrong?"

For a minute, Michael's not sure if Jake's mom is actually answering or not, but then a gale of wind cyclones into solid humanoid form in front of them.

"This is an emergency," she says. "Stay here. Outside is dangerous."

"Wait," Michael begs, but then she's gone in another burst of wind, clattering out the nearest window, which slams shut behind her. He shares a look of sheer panic with Jake, then they both dive for their phones.

There's no immediate news of any disasters online, so Michael texts his parents to ask what they're up to. They're out of town this weekend for his mom's business trip, so hopefully whatever is going on outside isn't happening in Massachusetts. A notification pops up to alert him that Jake's asking their group chat if they're okay, but he decides it can't hurt to try video calling Jeremy for immediate reassurance.

Jeremy doesn't pick up.

_Maybe he's in the bathroom_ , Michael tells himself. His phone vibrates with more notifications from the chat group, Christine, Brooke, and Jenna reporting in. He calls Jeremy again.

His dad texts back to say his mom's in a meeting, the weather's nice, does he want anything from Boston?

Jeremy doesn't pick up.

Michael calls him again. Chloe responds to the group chat. 

_Jeremy doesn't pick up_.

Michael's on the verge of a panic attack when he realizes Jake is waving a hand in front of his face, looking concerned. He holds his open hands with their palms towards his chest and moves them outwards, then back. **Breathe**.

Michael drags in a shuddery inhale, then expels it through his mouth. He repeats it until the threat of hyperventilation retreats, leaving his skin clammy and his mouth dry. It takes him another moment to muster the energy to sign **thank you**.

**You're welcome**. Jake points at Michael's phone, which reminds Michael to check what's exactly going on in the group chat.

Jenna's at home, as are Chloe and Christine. Brooke's at Pinkberry with her mom, and none of them are sure what exactly this so-called danger is. Nobody knows where Rich is. Christine says that Jeremy said he'd be at the magical studies library. They're caught half-between panic and disbelief that there's any real threat, until Jenna suddenly responds with [EVERYBODY STAY INDOORS AND CLOSE WINDOWS ETC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE], then goes into radio silence.

[wtf is going on!?] Michael asks, dread filling his stomach. He calls Jeremy again, but there's no answer.

Five minutes later, he only realizes something's happening because Jake jerks towards the front door, and he turns to see Jenna and Chloe tumbling inside, Jenna juggling three different bags and Chloe clutching onto what looks like a toolbox. 

"What's going on?" Jake asks. He's doing a better job at hiding his nerves than Michael, but Michael's pretty sure Jake's spent the last ten minutes bombarding Rich with texts and getting zero answers back.

"Gimme a sec," Jenna says, tugging her headphones off. She makes them clear the dining table and creates a paper transcriber for Michael before she sets up a video conference call with Brooke and Christine. In the meantime, Chloe's going through Jake's fridge, searching for something that Jakes has to go help find for her. Michael has never hated the silence more than now.

"Okay," Jenna says, once everybody's listening. Her hands are busy moving, pouring water and salt and all kinds of things into beakers. She's set up a mini potion lab with the stuff from her bags. "Jake's mom just told me there's a demonic Ancient on the loose outside."

"Oh god," Brooke says on her half of Jake's laptop screen.

"It's a sixth tier demon from the Ar—it's super old and super dangerous," Jenna summarizes. "Very powerful." She hesitates, then says, "It's inside Jeremy."

"What," Christine says.

Michael stares at Jenna, then looks back down at the paper where the origami figure is transcribing this whole conversation, because he can't have just read those words off Jenna's mouth, this can't be happening. It can't be true.

_It's inside Jeremy_ , the tidy handwriting says.

"Don't ask me why, but it's apparently in Jeremy and it's already taken over the school." Jenna slams a hand down onto the table mid-work, and Michael's never seen her look so furious before. "It's using Jeremy's voice to brainwash everybody in town."

"His _voice_?" Michael asks out loud, and it barely even occurs to him that he hasn't talked in front of more than three people in a very long time. The entire universe is coming apart at the seams. He feels ripped up and sown back together all wrong. "Jeremy's voice?"

"I don't know how it gave his voice back, but he's definitely using it," Jenna snarls. "He's singing. I heard him, just for half a second, but I heard him. Worst experience of my life. If I didn't have protection," she says with a finger tracing her piercing that glimmers under her touch, "I'd be pretty much fucked, too."

"Same," Chloe remarks, tapping her own earrings. "I almost just—stopped being me." She nods at Jake. "Your mom cut it off and saved my ass."

"So how bad is it?" Jake asks, hand still clenched around his phone. "Is it gonna be okay if we just wait in here?"

That very second, Michael feels everything _shake_. Like a tremor running through the air, a pulse of _something_ rattling through his bones.

"Shit," Jenna says, and checks her phone. "It knocked out the signal. It's cutting us off."

Michael checks his own phone to see that it's not receiving any signal either. He points at Jake's laptop, where the video call is still running, and raises his eyebrows at Jenna.

"I set it up so it can't be cut off," Jenna explains. "But once we hang up, we're on our own."

"No internet," Christine groans. "We should have just called the National Guard."

"We don't have time to wait for them anyway," Jenna snaps, measuring out what smells like a spoonful of dried lavender and dumping it into a cup. "It's an Ancient that can possess people and brainwash them, and it's channeling its power through sirensong. If you hear the song, you're fucked. I'd last maybe thirty seconds against it." Chloe brings her a bottle of mountain dew, which she pours into another cup. "The more time passes, the more manpower it gets, and it's virtually unkillable. Like, you could kill Jeremy," Michael twitches at that, and Jenna sends him a harried look of apology, "but it wouldn't kill the demon. It's probably been sealed until now, so that's the best bet. Sealing it away. And lucky for us, one of the useless stuff Gabriela taught me recently was a sealing potion."

"So we can get rid of it?" Jake asks, looking like he's seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. 

"I can make the potion," Jenna says, pouring ingredient after ingredient into a small cauldron. "But making Jeremy drink it is going to be a problem, especially given that going anywhere near him will brainwash us, and he's surrounded by brainwashed underlings, now."

"What about Sylphie?" Jake asks.

"She's busy trying to contain its influence," Jenna says. She pauses, hands settling around the cauldron. "But we might have a chance." She looks at Michael, then at Christine. "We have two people who can't hear it."

Michael distantly muses on how everything has come full circle. Jeremy's voice banished all sound from Michael's world, and now it's Michael's inability to hear Jeremy's voice that will save the world. 

-

Here's the plan: Jake and Chloe are the diversion at the front gate of the school. Chloe's taking Jenna's headphones, reinforcing the noise-cancelling function with a temporary spell, and she's magically configured a pair of Jake's, too. They should be able to block out all outer sound, and they'll be blasting music as a precaution. She's not sure how long they'll hold out, or how well they'll hold up against an Ancient, but it's their best shot.

Brooke has, after convincing her mom and the Pinkberry staff that the danger is real, settled into a nap in the store. She's their SOS signal, running through dreamscapes, calling for help. It's her job to find her father, anybody with the power to help, anybody. To tell them what's happening, to ask for help, to stay asleep.

Jenna is claiming Jake's dining room as headquarters and staying there. Leaving the only house protected with Ancient magic would be a definite dead end for her, with her hearing, so she doesn't really have much other choice. She supplies Christine and Chloe with small compact mirrors that swap reflections with twin mirrors that Jenna has. She'll be seeing what the mirrors see, and giving them instructions when necessary. She's also managed to create a small army of paper animals to act as support and distraction, which is impressive. Michael's aware that it takes enormous amounts of concentration and magic to keep multiple autonomous puppets moving simultaneously. 

Michael and Christine each have a small bottle of red potion that should supposedly seal the Ancient away as long as Jeremy takes a mouthful of it. Their job is to reach Jeremy on the school rooftop and somehow wrestle him into drinking the sugary-smelling liquid. Christine's left her hearing aids off, and Michael's pulled the hood of his hoodie up. Neither of them have really gotten into a physical fight with another person before, barring Michael's occasional bouts of avenging Jeremy's honor, and they're both not exactly track and field material, either.

But they both want Jeremy back. If risking their lives and fighting tooth and nail is what it takes, then so be it.

-

Michael and Christine go climb over a particularly secluded section of the school's back fence right as Jake speeds into the school parking lot with Chloe sitting shotgun, their backseat filled with paper tigers and hawks. Michael has no idea how well it's going over there, but he doesn't let himself worry, doesn't let himself think of how two of his friends just might get brainwashed by a demon Ancient right now, and focuses on plotting the fastest way up to the school roof. A paper hummingbird flits between him and Christine, playing lookout.

Christine presses herself to the wall beside one of the school's side entrances and holds out her mirror to peek through the glass door. On the mirror's reflection, Jenna mouths _all clear_.

They both enter the school building, hummingbird flying ahead, trying to tread as quietly as possible, but it's hard to tell how successful they are. The halls are empty, which is weird. 

**Where is everybody?** He asks Christine.

**Maybe they all went to the front entrance?** Christine hazards, looking confused but overall relieved. **Or maybe there's not as many people here as we thought?**

He hopes so. Another possible option is that this is a trap, and Michael really doesn't want to face that possibility.

They've almost made it to the staircase when the hummingbird doubles back. Michael ducks behind the nearest locker, dragging Christine with him, hummingbird settling on his shoulder. Christine angles the mirror carefully around the corner of the lockers and they see Jenna holding up a finger, telling them to wait. She switches to a thumbs up after a few seconds, so Michael peers around the corner, seeing two figures disappear around the far corner of the hall.

**Patrols?** He signs.

**Hopefully there aren't many of them** , Christine signs back with a grim expression.

They climb one set of stairs without encountering anybody else, which is either a miracle or an omen, then climb another. They need to access the staircase at the other end to reach the roof, though, so they decide to chance crossing the hall on this floor before they hit the last one.

They're sneaking through the hallway when Michael senses a movement out of the corner of his eye and he whips around to see Mr. Reyes standing a few feet away from them, a classroom door ajar behind him. 

"What are you two doing?" Mr. Reyes asks, gaze shifting from Christine to Michael. "It's past school hours."

Michael shares an incredulous look with Christine, unsure what the hell is going on.

"Um, we're just here to grab something we forgot," Christine says, false smile plastered uneasily across her face. "We'll go right now. Nothing to worry about, Mr. Reyes!"

Mr. Reyes furrows his brow. "Alright, then." 

They watch him turn around and return back to the classroom, door shutting behind him. After a few more moments, Michael signs, bewildered, **what was that?**

**Maybe Mr. Reyes has weird magic immunity?** Christine signs, and they both turn back to head towards the far staircase once more, hummingbird flying ahead once more.

Halfway there, it occurs to Michael that Mr. Reyes's classroom isn't on this floor.

_Then what is he doing up here_ , he wonders, and turns his head to see Mr. Reyes lunging for Christine.

"Still so far to go in your acting career, Miss Canigula!" Mr. Reyes roars, grabbing her by the elbow before Michael can warn her, and Christine's mouth opens in a shriek. Michael grabs Christine's other arm before she can be pulled away, and she uses the anchoring pull to aim a kick directly into Mr. Reyes's shin. He doesn't even budge.

_Oh fuck_ , Michael thinks. _Do brainwashed people not feel pain?_

They're so fucking screwed.

Michael sees heads peeking around classroom doorways, figures shuffling into view from the opposite end of the hall in an uncanny reenactment of Apocalypse of the Damned. It's the most unsettling thing he's seen.

Christine headbutts his shoulder, shaking him out of his paralysis. "Go!" She orders him. "I'll hold them off." She shoves the mirror into his fingers, baring her teeth. Repeats herself, "Go! Jeremy needs you!"

After a split-second of hesitation, Michael lets go.

And he runs, runs straight for the stairs, potion bottle clutched in one hand, and he wants to scream, wants to break everything apart, wants this nightmare to stop. He wants Jenna to not look so horrified in the mirror, wants Brooke not to have to stay asleep for god knows how long, wants Jake and Chloe not to sacrifice themselves. He wants Rich to be okay, wants Christine not to face the wolves alone, wants to be more than the terrified kid stumbling up the stairs all alone, trying to get his best friend back.

He goes up one floor and nobody stops him. He goes up another and nobody stops him. He goes though the door to the roof and nobody stops him.

And in the middle of the empty rooftop stands Jeremy, face tipped up skywards, eyes closed, mouth open. It takes a moment for Michael to track the movement of Jeremy's mouth shaping words to realize, _he's singing_.

He staggers forward.

Jeremy opens his eyes, face turning towards Michael, and his eyes are eerily blue, bluer than Michael remembers them being. A slow smile blooms across Jeremy's face. "Michael."

Michael can't help but take another step closer. "Jeremy?"

Jeremy smiles, but there's no warmth there. Beckons Michael closer. It must be a trap, but Michael goes anyway. This is his only chance.

As he makes his way towards Jeremy, he shifts the hand holding the bottle out of Jeremy's view, starts unscrewing the cap with both hands behind his back. Just one mouthful, one sip. It's all he needs.

"You're not Jeremy," Michael says, stalling for time. "Let him go."

"He gave this body to me," the demon wearing Jeremy's face says, and Michael nearly drops the bottle at those words. "We made a deal."

"Bullshit," Michael snarls, hands shaking, cap nearly unscrewed.

"Oh, Michael," not-Jeremy coos, both hands coming up to hold Michael's face, "why do you think I let you up here in the first place?"

Then he kisses Michael.

Michael freezes under the warm mouth against his, his eyes wide open, unseeing. It's like the entire world disappears. Then the scent of seabreeze and wildflowers hits him, and god, it's unfair, it's so unfair. This isn't Jeremy, it isn't, but Michael's heartbeat triples anyway. His entire body goes hot and liquid anyway. When a warm tongue licks at the seam of his lips, begging for entrance, he moans and opens his mouth anyway.

Jeremy's head tilts, angling his mouth to fit perfectly against Michael's, and then he _sings_ into Michael's mouth.

The universe goes supernova, colors bleaching into bright light then exploding into technicolor, a jolt of lightning traveling down his spine. For a moment, he feels like a bomb's been dropped on him, the entire world muffled and blurry, then Jeremy's hand slaps the bottle out of Michael's numb hands and Michael can _hear_ the sound of unearthly screaming.

He shoves himself away from not-Jeremy, stumbling backwards onto his ass, the bottle rolling beside him, spilling its contents across the rooftop. Michael hears another burst of screaming that's like nothing he's ever heard before.

"What the fuck did you do to me?!" he screams. He can't hear his own voice, but he hears the muffled sound of distant wailing.

"Ah, you didn't let me complete the job," not-Jeremy chides. Michael can almost hear him. It's like listening to someone speak from underwater. "See, I promised Jeremy to grant him anything he wanted in return for granting me this," he purrs, running a hand down Jeremy's chest. Michael shudders. "I keep my word, and whatever he asked for, I would have granted it. He could have asked for fame, power, even love." Not-Jeremy looks down at Michael with an unimpressed look. "All he wanted was for you to get your hearing back."

-

( _No_ , Jeremy screams inside his own head. _No, no, no, no, I didn't want this_. 

"I'll even let you go afterwards," the Ancient in him tells Michael. "All I need is to keep my word."

_Not like this. Please not like this_.

There's the sound of wind shrieking around the school, and the Ancient sighs. "Just a moment," it says to Michael, then turns Jeremy's head and sings, shredding into the winds like razorblades. Jeremy hears a crash from the football field, where Jake and Chloe have been surrounded by their teachers and classmates and neighbors. He hears Jake yell for his mother as she screams, ripped apart by his voice, and hears Chloe's shrill cry at the Ancient's last line of defense. "Rich, stop!"

_Stop, no, stop_ , Jeremy begs, listening to his friends scream. _Don't do this anymore._

He's helpless to stop the Ancient in him from turning his head back to Michael, who looks up at him like he's a monster. Like he's a god. Like he's a wish come true with an ugly price.

_He wants to be fixed, too_ , the Ancient muses. _He's just as selfish as you are._

"Don't worry," Jeremy's voice says, his legs kneeling in front of Michael, his hand on Michael's cheek. "You'll be whole again now."

Jeremy screams and screams and screams, but none of it stops him from kissing Michael again.

He licks into Michael's mouth, coaxes a song into it, and then he tastes sugar and copper and ash, the liquid on Michael's tongue burning as it goes down Jeremy's throat, Michael's hands clutching Jeremy's jaws so that Jeremy swallows. By Jeremy's knees, the emptied plastic bottle rolls away.

Inside his head, the Ancient starts to scream.)

-

Michael wakes up to a bland white ceiling that he doesn't recognize, his brain fuzzy like he just had a concussion and had some pretty incredible drugs at the same time. It takes a while for him to remember what happened.

Jeremy possessed by a demon Ancient. Not-Jeremy kissing Michael. Michael getting his hearing partially back. Michael taking the last remaining mouthful from the dropped potion bottle into his mouth when not-Jeremy was distracted. Force-feeding the potion to not-Jeremy while he'd sung into his mouth. The feelings of a bomb going off in his head again, the sensation of his brain rearranging itself in a scramble, right before he passed out right then and there. Yeah, that's it.

He gropes around a solid minute before his hand lands on his glasses, and when he finally puts them on he realizes he's in a hospital bed in an otherwise empty room.

He hesitates, then snaps his fingers next to his ear.

Nothing.

No big surprise there, he supposes. Hearing again in reality instead of a dream was like an acid trip. It doesn't help that the only sounds he could hear were fairly traumatizing.

The door opens, and he sees Christine making a beeline for him, followed by Jenna, who looks tired but otherwise unbothered.

**You're awake!** Christine signs. **You've been out for almost two days. We were so worried**.

**Two days?** Michael signs back. **What happened? Is everybody okay?** Christine looks fairly unharmed, as far as Michael can tell, but he needs to make sure. **Are you okay?**

**Yeah, they just restrained me and tied me up in a classroom** , Christine explains. **Everybody who was brainwashed seem okay. Shaken up, but nobody's seriously hurt.** She hesitates. **Except Rich. He got electrocuted pretty badly by Chloe, and she got a couple burns. They're both glad that's all the damage they caused**.

Michael's stomach sinks at the way she hesitates. **Jake?**

**He broke both of his legs** , Christine signs. Michael hisses in dismay. **He says he's fine, and he should recover smoothly, but I think he's really upset about his mom**.

Jake's mom, who Michael had heard screaming. The bottom of his stomach drops out. Did Jeremy _kill_ —

**She's okay** , Christine signs quickly. **Jenna knows better than I do**. 

**It crippled her pretty badly, but she's going to recover. It's nothing noticeable from a human standpoint, but metaphorically, it's like she got both legs cut off without the anesthesia** , Jenna explains, and Michael gags at the imagery. **She'll grow them back, but they might not be as good as before.**

**Jake's upset about it, but they're going to be okay** , Christine assures him.

Michael hesitates before asking the biggest question of all. **Jeremy?**

Christine looks at Jenna, who answers him instead. **He's okay.** Michael feels relief wash over him, but Jenna holds up a finger to indicate she's not done. **But there are a few caveats. First, he's obviously traumatized by what happened. Second, the Ancient's still in him.**

Michael stiffens. 

**It's what a sealing potion does** , she continues. **You seal an unruly Ancient into another human. It's almost like human sacrifice, which is why the potion is obsolete nowadays. Too inhumane, or whatever. But it's the only solution for an Ancient that's already inhabiting someone's body. I told you: you can't get rid of the Ancient. Best you can do is seal it away and try to make sure it never wakes up again. For now, Jeremy's just himself**.

Michael signs a shaky **okay, so he's not in any danger now?**

**Not right now**. Jenna makes a complicated face. **Which kinda brings me to the third caveat. He got his voice back.**

Oh. That surprises Michael more than it should. He should have realized that just because his hearing didn't come back doesn't mean Jeremy's speech wouldn't. **That's a good thing, isn't it?**

Jenna shakes her head. **Except he only got his siren voice back, not his human one. He can't talk normally.** Michael doesn't quite get the difference. Jenna elaborates in response to the confusion echoing in his head. **When a siren hybrid talks, they usually aren't using magic. It's just a normal human voice. But if they're using their siren voice, there's magic rooted in it, which means they can directly influence whoever's listening. He can't brainwash anyone on the spot anymore, not without the Ancient giving him a boost, but he can influence people's emotions, be super persuasive, that kind of stuff. He can't turn it off.** She makes a face. **That can make things messy.**

Christine signs, **he's been examined by two Grand Witches and a lot of other professionals. They think he can return to normal life, though he might have to try not to speak to other people until he can control his voice a bit better. He's being kept overnight for observation.**

**Did you talk to him?** Michael asks.

Christine bites her lip. **He apologized to everybody, but I don't think he's listening when we tell him we don't blame him. We've told him that he's still our friend and we're here for him when he's ready.**

He's about to ask them if they found out what Jeremy asked for in his deal with the devil, if they know about the whole issue with Michael's hearing, but his parents burst through the door, followed by a doctor and nurse. During the ensuing hassle of reassuring his parents and submitting to the doctor's checkup, Christine and Jenna wave goodbye, promising to return tomorrow.

-

It's boring in a hospital room, with nothing to do and no real problems to justify his lazing on the bed. Nothing seems to be wrong with Michael, but he's being kept overnight for observation just in case. He has his phone and adaptor, bless his parents for bringing it, but there's nothing else to occupy him. He'd try to sleep, but after the near 48-hour sleep-a-thon, his body's annoyingly refreshed and awake.

The group chat is quiet, with Brooke and Christine contributing to most of the ongoing conversation, with the occasional blip from Chloe. Jenna checks in regularly, but doesn't add to any conversations for once, and Rich is maintaining radio silence other than one huge guilty apology at the beginning. Jake only responds when directly asked to, which is depressing. Michael reassures everybody that he's alive, then sticks to mostly emojis.

Jeremy doesn't even seem to be reading the chat at all.

Michael wants to text him privately, wants to video call him, wants to walk up another floor and find him and wraps his arms around him, but he doesn't. He's too fucking scared.

So he's sitting on his bed and scrolling Buzzfeed for the umpteenth time, trying to distract himself from his depressing reality, when a hand waves into his vision and he jerks in surprise, almost falling off the bed.

"What the shit," he hisses on instinct, heart pounding as he realizes Jeremy is standing in his room, looking thin and vulnerable in his hospital gown and slippers.

**Sorry** , Jeremy apologizes. **I just wanted to see you.** He takes a half-step back. **I can leave if you want me to**.

**Stay** , Michael immediately signs.

Jeremy wavers, and Michael stretches a hand out towards him, imploring silently.

After a moment of dithering, Jeremy steps closer and takes Michael's hand, and Michael can't help but pull him in, throw an arm around Jeremy's neck, holding him tight. He breathes in, relishing the faint cotton smell, the undertone of sea and wilderness. He forces the words out of his throat. "Don't ever fucking trade yourself for me ever again."

Jeremy stiffens against him, but Michael isn't done yet. "Listen, I know you feel guilty about my ears, but you need to let it go, Jer. I'm okay with living like this forever. I really am. Please stop beating yourself up over it, or trying to fix it for me. It's okay. You don't have to do anything. Just, stop thinking about what's good for me or what I want." He doesn't know how to say, _I want us to just be normal best friends again. I want more. I love you. It'll kill me if you leave me but if it's what you want, you should go. I don't want my feelings to hold you back._

He doesn't know how to say _I don't know if we'll ever be good for each other, if our history will ever stop weighing us down, but I don't think I can survive living apart from you, the glimpse I had of a life without you when you didn't pick up your phone was the most terrifying thing in the world._

So he just settles for closing his eyes and burying his face against Jeremy's shoulder, and he pulls the words out of himself. 

"So just, please. Be selfish. You need to be selfish."

-

(Michael tells him to be selfish, and Jeremy wants to cry, wants to tell him _you don't know how selfish I really am_ , wants to shove Michael down on the bed and take every inch of Michael so nobody else can have him. Not a human or a hybrid or even a fucking millennia-old Ancient.

He doesn't deserve Michael, never has. He doesn't deserve to be selfish, not after five years ago, not after what he's done two days ago. 

But for just this moment, he pretends he can be. 

He leans closer from where he's standing at the edge of Michael's bed, hugs Michael tight and pretends he can have this, just for tonight, and says the words just this once over Michael's shoulder, just for himself.

"I love you."

Michael twitches, and Jeremy's bracing himself to be asked what he just said, but instead Michael says, very slowly, "Jeremy, I can hear you.")

-

Jeremy stiffens, then pulls away roughly, and Michael's too stunned to stop him. He's pretty sure he just heard Jeremy say _I love you_ out loud. 

"You _what_?" Jeremy asks, and Michael can hear the crack in his voice, _holy shit_.

"I can hear you," Michael says. He still can't hear his own voice, but for some reason, Jeremy's is crystal clear. "Turn around and say a random number."

Jeremy turns his back to Michael and says, "Fifty-two."

"Fifty-two," Michael repeats, and Jeremy whirls around, eyes huge and mouth agape. 

"You can hear me," he says, awed, before he blanches, presumably remembering exactly what Michael just heard. It's only Michael's ability to immediately predict Jeremy's next move that allows him to leap out of bed just as Jeremy bolts for the door.

Jeremy gets a hand on the door handle and turns it, almost pulling the door an inch open, but Michael slams the door back shut, caging Jeremy in so that he can't run.

"You don't get to say something like that and then _run_ ," Michael says, hoping his words aren't slurring. He really wants this conversation to be crystal clear to both of them. "You can't leave me on a cliffhanger like that."

"It w-wasn't," Jeremy splutters, and it's so strange to hear his voice after five years. Even dreams can't compare to this. "I just, I'm very emotional. I'm recovering from being p-possessed by an Ancient." He stumbles over his words, either in panic or from disuse or both. 

"So you didn't mean it?" Michael asks. Jeremy's still facing the door, one hand feebly clutching the door handle, and he wants to see Jeremy's face. Wants to hear him say those words again. Wants to kiss him. "You don't love me?"

Jeremy makes a pained noise. "What do you want me to say?"

"Say it again."

"You—" Jeremy turns at that, his back against the door, scant inches between them. There's only the glow of moonlight and the dim lighting from the hallway filtering through the door window to illuminate his expression, but Michael can make out the disbelief and the desperate hope all the same. "You don't mean that," Jeremy says in a choked voice.

"Tell me you love me," Michael says.

Jeremy opens his mouth, the words on the tip of his tongue, but he snaps it shut and claps a hand over it. In a muffled voice, he says, "It's a trick. My voice, it can make people feel what I want them to feel. This isn't—Michael, get away from me."

God, Michael loves this stupid, self-sacrificing, beautiful boy so fucking much. "Are you saying your voice tricked me into getting a crush on you in middle school?" Jeremy's eyes widen above his hand. "Are you saying you somehow put a siren spell on me while you were mute, and that's why I've wanted to kiss you for years now? Are you saying," he says, throwing all his cards on the table, "that I've been in love with you all this time because of three words you just said today?"

He taps his a finger against the door, over and over, a familiar beat he memorized years ago with only one person in mind, and on the fourth repeat, Jeremy seems to catch on. A tear drips down his cheek, then another falls from his lashes onto the hand still covering the lower half of his face. "Michael," he croaks.

"It doesn't matter what you say," Michael says. "I love you. Always have, always will. What you say right now won't change that."

Jeremy lowers his hand, eyes shining in the reflected moonlight, crying in earnest as he says, "I love you, I love you," over and over, even as Michael leans forward to tap his forehead against Jeremy's. Keeps saying the words against Michael's mouth as Michael kisses him and swallows them like a prayer.

-

See, the thing is, they're both still broken. 

Jeremy's voice is constantly laced with magic, no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. Sometimes he'll inadvertently make a sound that has goosebumps running down everybody's backs, or he'll accidentally growl in anger and the object of his ire will suddenly cower in fear. He mostly sticks to ASL for communicating in public, only using his voice with their friends and his dad, and even then he's always cautious with every word he says. He's still swamped with guilt, both old and new, and his ability to be selfish is a work in progress.

Michael's hearing is still gone, except somehow the Ancient in Jeremy's body has managed to rewire his brain to hear the sounds of magic, instead. So in his silent world he gets to hear the crackling power in Chloe's nail art, the whistle of Jake's mom flying by, and the occasional roar of something Ancient passing through. He can't hear anybody's words but Jeremy's—which only complicates their codependency issues, unfortunately—but some sound is better than no sound, and Michael's working through his own communication issues and his constant need to fix Jeremy's problems.

They go to school and help Rich relearn to be a little less scared of himself, watch Jake's legs and smile recover, spend time with Christine, and startle at Brooke and Chloe sitting with Jenna at the lunch table now. They play video games and do their homework and have conversations that end in makeout sessions. 

They're both broken, but that's okay. They're both starting to learn that neither of them really need fixing.

-

There are days when Michael misses music. When he misses the chatter of other people, the sound of his own voice. 

But he has Jeremy's voice, clear and sweet and a world of music all on its own. The sound of Jeremy's laughter smothered against Michael's shoulder, his sleepy mumbling pressed into the skin above Michael's collarbone, his undignified snorts and happy hums and the way he says Michael's name adoringly into Michael's mouth. He has Jeremy whispering _I love you, I love you_ as he presses kisses into Michael's hair in the dark of the night. 

And that's all he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> writing tumblr: [divineprojectzero](http://divineprojectzero.tumblr.com)  
> main tumblr: [listentotheshityousay](http://listentotheshityousay.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@listento_yousay](http://twitter.com/listento_yousay)
> 
> also: a sequel is...in the works.


End file.
